Jakub Dobeš is a Czech ice hockey goaltender from Ostrava who plays overseas for the Montreal Canadiens of the NHL.
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Jakub Dobeš is a Czech ice hockey goaltender from Ostrava who plays overseas for the Montreal Canadiens of the NHL.[1]
The road to the NHL
He went overseas in 2017. Three years later Montreal selected him in the fifth round of the draft, 136th overall. In March 2024 he signed a two-year entry-level contract with the club. In the 2023/24 season he played 51 games for the farm team Laval Rocket.[1]
On 27 December 2024 the Canadiens called him up to the main team. He was 23 at the time and had appeared in 14 games for Laval in the ongoing season, winning nine of them. He was to back up the number one goaltender Samuel Montembeault, who had played the Canadiens' last ten games, and could thus make his first NHL start. The Canadiens were facing a run of five away games, the first of them on Saturday on Florida's ice.[1]
The 2025/26 season and the playoffs
In the regular season he played 43 games according to NHL.com and, with 29 wins, led the league's rookie goaltenders in victories.[2]
In the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs, Dobeš had a record of nine wins and six losses in fifteen games as of 22 May 2026, with a save percentage of 91.1. Twice he won a deciding seventh game on the opponent's ice, which made him, according to NHL.com, the second rookie goaltender in the history of the competition to win more than one road Game 7 in a single playoff run. Before him, Ken Dryden had done so in 1971.[2]
In Game 7 of the first round of the Eastern Conference against Tampa Bay he stopped 28 of 29 shots and Montreal won 2:1, even though the opponent had out-shot them 29:9. In Game 7 of the second round against Buffalo he stopped 37 of 39 shots. Across the two Game 7s he saved 65 of 68 shots, or 95.6 percent. He recorded two wins in a seventh game of one playoff round as the third goaltender in the club's history, after Jaroslav Halák (2010) and Ken Dryden (1971).[2]
After a loss in the previous game, he won all six playoff games, with a save percentage of 94.2 and a goals-against average of 1.77. On the road he had seven wins after nine games, which put him first in that statistic across the whole playoffs. For these reasons NHL.com listed him among the possible candidates for the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to the most valuable player of the playoffs.[2]